Samuel Johnson Quotes About Preparation

• To neglect at any time preparation for death is to sleep on our post at a siege; to omit it in old age is to sleep at an attack.

  Samuel Johnson

  Death, Sleep, Preparation

  The Rambler no. 78 (15 Dec. 1750)

• Solitude is the surest nurse of all prurient passions, and a girl in the hurry of preparation, or tumult of gaiety, has neither inclination nor leisure to let tender expressions soften or sink into her heart. The ball, the show, are not the dangerous places: no, 'tis the private friend, the kind consoler, the companion of the easy vacant hour, whose compliance with her opinions can flatter her vanity, and whose conversation can sooth, without ever stretching her mind, that is the lover to be feared: he who buzzes in her ear at court, or at the opera, must be contented to buzz in vain.

  Samuel Johnson

  Girl, Passion, Heart

  James Boswell, Samuel Johnson (1859). “The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL. D.: Including a Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides”, p.256

• Everybody loves to have things which please the palate put in their way, without trouble or preparation.

  Samuel Johnson

  Food, Cooking, Preparation

  James Boswell, Samuel Johnson (1866). “The Life of Samuel Johnson”, p.125

• I fancy mankind may come, in time, to write all aphoristically, except in narrative; grow weary of preparation, and connection, and illustration, and all those arts by which a big book is made.

  Samuel Johnson

  Art, Book, Writing

  Samuel Johnson (2010). “Journey to the Hebrides: A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland & The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides”, p.183, Canongate Books

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